The Care and Feeding of Griffins (52 page)

Perfect silence for just one second.  Even she screamed without sound.

Then light, blasting out from him in rings as full and fierce as the creation of a star.

Eruption.  It cut into her, battering her until she could feel her soul slapped out from her body through the pure, otherworldly force of it.  She looked down and saw them, not joined in sexual union, but only kneeling together, arms entwined, staring into one another’s eyes.  Then he came, not with the manifestation of his predetermined body, but truly came.  The amaranthine seed of his soul in flight was sown into the ephemeral heart of her spirit, and she was blown back and away by the shockwave of their shared climax.  She came, not through pleasure, but simply because she was swept callously into the flow of his passion and hurtled out to the far-flung reaches of his inner space.  She felt herself shatter in halves, then fourths, and again, again, dividing out at boiling speed into an embryonic place of preexistence where she tottered, caught at the cusp of some terrible rebirth.  And then she snapped back, tumbling through the orgasmic drifts of his awareness to crash into her body once more.

He lay atop her, warm and smooth and softly breathing against her neck.  He must have felt her return.  He asked if she were hurt.

“I’m…not sure.”

He raised himself, laid his hand over her heart and then gave her a reassuring nod before gaining his feet.  He helped her to stand, then embraced her again, his feet in the River and hers on the shore.  He thanked her once more, his sincerity adding warmth to his solemn gratitude.

“You’re welcome,” Taryn said.  She wasn’t sure that was the right response, but he seemed to be waiting for something.

He waited a while longer, and then dropped his arms to his sides and regarded her closely.

“What?” she asked.

She hadn’t asked him for anything in return.

Taryn blinked at him.  “Do…Do you know what they call a girl who has sex in exchange for favors?” she asked hesitantly.

She sensed his humor.  In his days on Earth, they had called such girls priestesses.

“Well, now they’re called prostitutes.  And I’m neither one.”  Taryn touched his arm, his chest, and finally his cheek.  “I don’t trade myself.”

His expression did not change but he frowned anyway.  She had both his seed and his name.  Did she understand what that gave her?

“A friend,” she said.  “When I come to cross the River.”

He laid his hand over hers, brought it to his mouth, and breathed gently into her palm.  Then he released her and turned, moving back through the water.  He stepped up onto his pale raft, his skin dry, and took up his pole.  He pushed away from the shore without a backwards glance and vanished into the enveloping fog.  He was soon lost to sight, but the touch of his mind endured a little longer before it, too, passed from her.  The distant murmur of unseen souls faded to silence.

The Riverman was gone.

Taryn turned around and found her clothing discarded on the bank.  She dressed and started walking.  Again, the plains seemed to pass beneath her at unnatural speed, although there was no sense of rushing movement.  Soon, she was walking across the commons of the kraal, back to the Beti Kale and through its walls.  She could see Tonka sleeping, outlined in red by the coals of his hearth-fire.  She lay down before him, passing easily through his curled arms, and then turned into the warmth of his chest.  She closed her eyes.